Re: How to tell WHY apt wants to install so many packages

[Christian Schnobrich <schnobs@babylon-kino.de>]

On Tue, 2005-01-18 at 09:31 -0500, Marc Shapiro wrote:
> Is there any package, or command, that will go through the "depends' for 
> a packages and tell me exactly why apt-get wants to install over 30MB of 
> packages when all I am trying to do is remove ONE package.

I have not gone through your list and tried to figure it out. This is
just the first thought that crossed my mind:

apt will by default try to update packages where a newer version is
available. So even if all you type ist "apt-get install something", it
will not only get the the package something, but also fetch newer
versions of already-installed packages as if you typed "apt-get
upgrade".

I don't know if this can be turned off somewhere. My personal workaround
is not to update the package lists until I want to upgrade. So in the
meantime apt-get won't even know that there is a newer version and hence
won't upgrade.

cu,
Schnobs